I'm a research scientist at the Defence, Science and Technology Organisation in Adelaide, where I specialise in radar target location and tracking. I'm also a Member of the Australian Institute of Physics, as well as the Australasian Society for General Relativity and Gravitation.
I hold a doctorate from the Department of Physics and Mathematical Physics at Adelaide University, with a thesis in mathematical physics completed in 1996. My PhD work was concerned with quantum statistical methods, wherein I used the tool of influence functionals to look at decoherence and entropy in the early universe, as well as related topics such as thermal radiance of black holes. I worked with and was supervised by Paul Davies (Adelaide), Bei-Lok Hu (Maryland) and Andrew Matacz (both, now in Paris).
Before that I completed a masters degree in physics with first class honours in the Physics Department at the University of Auckland in 1991, specialising in applied accelerator physics. I did the initial exploratory work which eventually lead to the establishment there of a PIXE facility. PIXE (proton-induced X-ray emission) is used for trace element analysis using the idea that proton bombardment will cause materials to emit tell-tale X-rays and gamma rays. For this I was awarded the Seiichi Waki Prize in 1990 for best Auckland experimental physics masters thesis. I was also awarded Senior Prizes in Physics (1988) and Mathematics (1987).
Prior to that I completed a bachelors degree majoring in mathematics at Auckland University in 1988. In the same year I held a vacation scholarship at the Australian National University in Canberra, contributing to all levels of the nuclear department's accelerator mass spectrometry programme, analysing soil samples for their chlorine-36 content.